How Nursery Rhymes Help in Developing Oral Language in Kids
Remember way back when your kindergarten teacher taught you “twinkle twinkle” and “Jack and Jill”. You were so eager to run home and recite it to your mum and dad and they were so proud of you! Little did you know what a big impact it had on your verbal skills back then. Here is why you should incorporate nursery rhymes in your child’s life.
Nursery rhymes contribute in a big way to develop language skills in your children. When we sing nursery rhymes to our children, it sometimes seems to us that we are repeating the same rhymes over and over again. However, even if your child is young and is not able to comprehend the nursery rhyme, it is definitely making a huge impact on their listening, comprehension and oral skills.
- Through nursery rhymes, children are exposed various sounds and phonetic skills. Children’s ability to hear, identify and understanding of sounds increases drastically when exposed to nursery rhymes at an earlier stage of life.
- Children are introduced to the most important concepts of language development like tone, pitch and volume through nursery rhymes. They learn how words can be used in a rhythmic manner and the way they sound when used with rhythm.
- With gradual and continuous exposure to nursery rhymes, children learn to understand the different tone of voice used when someone is questioning them or making a statement.
- They learn to identify between a surprised voice, an angry voice, an excited voice and various types of emotions.
- Nursery rhymes also expand the imaginative skills of your child. When they are listening to those rhymes, they are also trying to identify the words that they know and are making a mental image of the word. This helps them expand their imagination and creative skills. The more rhymes your children will listen to, the more the development of their imaginative skills will be.
- Since your child is now exposed to a whole set of new words, it is helping your child know and understand new words. Thus helping build the vocabulary of your child.
- Nursery rhymes are rhythmic and hence are pleasant to listen to. And since they are so pleasant to listen to, that’s why it is interesting for the child to repeat the words and thus forming their love for words. Children learn to form their first sentences through nursery rhymes.
- It arouses your child’s interest in language and thus helps your child in his own language development. The love for literature and language is actually seeded at this stage of a child’s life. Parents need to be more attentive and spend more time with children on understanding nursery rhymes and inculcating the habit of singing it often.
Needless to say that nursery rhymes are a fun way of learning a lot of oral skills including language, tone, pitch, volume and rhythm. Sometimes nursery rhymes have abrupt or unexpected endings, this surely helps build the curiosity in your child along with a fun element ingrained throughout the learning process. This can be used to further explore the imaginative skills of your child by asking what could be another probable ending of this nursery rhyme. You will definitely be taken by surprise when you hear the ending your child will create.
